Hearn says Spence isn’t big enough fight for Brook

By Boxing News - 02/02/2017 - Comments

Image: Hearn says Spence isn’t big enough fight for Brook

By Scott Gilfoid: Eddie Hearn is bellyaching about unbeaten IBF mandatory challenger Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) not being a big enough fight for his fighter IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) to be fighting. Hearn says that it’s his job as the promoter to put his fighters in fights that are big enough in comparison to the risk involved, and he doesn’t see the Spence fight being big enough to be worth the risk.

The problem is that Brook doesn’t want to vacate his IBF 147lb title to dodge the Spence fight. Moreover, Spence just won’t go away. He’s like a shark that smells blood in the water. He’s circling Brook and ready to tear him to pieces if he doesn’t give up his IBF title and skedaddle the way that Hearn wants him to.

Hearn says he’s going to make a decision this Friday whether Brook will be fighting Spence or not. If so, there will be a purse bid taking place next week on February 7. Not every fight is a big one.

Brook still fought Kevin Bizier Jo Jo Dan and Frankie Gavin despite those fights not being big ones. Hearn still made those fights even though they weren’t big ones. Why is Hearn making a big deal about the Spence fight not being a big one too? Is he spoiled now after Brook’s last fight against Gennady Golovkin being a big one? Not every fight is going to be a big one.

That’s not how things are in boxing. The big fights only come around once in a great while.
Hearn thinks that Spence shouldn’t be in such a big hurry to fight Brook in the UK, because it’s going to be a very tough fight for him. It’s not so much going to be such a tough fight for Brook, but rather it’ll be a tough fight for Spence, says Hearn. His outlook on the fight runs counter to that of a lot of boxing fans, who see Brook as being too weak, too old and too fragile to handle the power, youth and talent of Spence.

Hearn said this to thaboxingvonce.com about the Brook vs. Spence fight:

“His decision at the moment is to fight Errol Spence,” said Hearn to Thaboxingvoice.com. “I’ve made Errol Spence offers. They’ve never even come back to me. So maybe they just want to go to purse bids. If I was representing Errol Spence, a 75/25 purse bid with Kell Brook and Errol Spence is the fighter I think he is, I wouldn’t be rushing to send him to the UK for this fight. You’re all saying it’s a tough fight for Kell Brook. Let’s get one thing straight. This is a tough fight for Errol Spence. We’ll find out. It’s a good fight, but it’s not as big as it should be. That’s the problem. One of my responsibilities is to put a fighter in a fight where the risk equates to the correct reward, and this is a classic fight that doesn’t. But he [Brook] doesn’t even care about that. He’s saying ‘That’s my belt,’” said Hearn,

One reason why Spence’s management isn’t responding to the offers made by Hearn is they’re likely so low that they’re not worthy of a response. If the offers were close enough to what they’re looking for to make a counter offer, then they would have certainly done so. I hate to say it, but Hearn’s offers have got to be too low for Spence’s management to even want to bother giving a counter off.

If you see that a promoter is only offering you chickenfeed offers, then it’s pointless to come back with a counter offer, because you’re wasting your time and their time by doing so. You can argue that the non-response from Spence’s promoters is their way of saying that they won’t dignify a response to such a low offer.

Hearn needs to worry about him winning that purse bid, because he might not win it for the Brook-Spence fight. If Spence’s management wins the bid, then they’re going to stick that fight in the U.S for someplace like New York. It’ll be a huge pro-Spence audience, and Brook will be fighting for one of the few ties in his boxing career against a hostile audience. That would be hard for Brook at this point, because he’s been so accustomed to fighting in front of his own fans, who cheer him no matter what he does.

Brook did beat Shawn Porter by a controversial 12 round decision win in 2014 in the U.S, but that was a different fighter. Brook got away with nonstop holding in that fight without the referee taking points off. If that’s all Brook has in his bag of tricks for the Spence fight, then I think he’s going to come up short.

Brook isn’t going to beat Spence if his Plan-A is holding all night, and his Plan-B is running for 12 rounds. You’ve got to be able to actually fight Spence, because he’s dangerous when he’s being held. I’ve seen fighters try that with him, and he turns around and brains them with his free hand with repeated shots to the head until they let go of him. Brook has got to have a better game plan than just holding 10 times per round if he wants to compete with Spence. Brook needs to go back to how he used to fight when he was throwing punches, and standing his ground. Against Gennady Golovkin, Brook ran around the ring for the entire fight, refusing to stand and fight for any length of time.

In speaking about a fight between Brook ant Miguel Cotto, Hearn said, “I’d make that fight and bring it to the UK. Does Cotto want to fight Kell Brook? I believe no. I tried to make that fight before. Peter Nelson told me he’d like that fight. I talked to [Cotto’s promoters] Roc Nation, and they were like ‘no, no, no.’ I don’t blame them. I think Cotto is the perfect fight for Kell Brook, and a tough fight,” said Hearn.

I think Brook lost any chance of fighting Cotto when he used all that movement in the Golovkin fight. The last thing that Cotto needs is to fight someone that he’s going to need to chase around the ring. I don’t know if Cotto saw Brook’s fight against Shawn Porter in 2014, but if he did see that fight, then he might not want to have to deal with all the holding that Brook might elect to do.

Cotto is an old school fighter who expects his opponents to fight in a traditional manner rather than spoil for 12 rounds by holding and running. You can’t ask a fighter like Cotto to have to chase an opponent around the ring at age 36. He’s not going to want to fight someone like that.

Cotto also isn’t going to want to fight an octopus that chooses to hold him each time he gets in punching range like we saw Brook do in the Porter fight. Heck, Porter fighting an octopus that night with the way that Brook held him repeatedly. The thing is, Hearn was pleased with all the holding that Brook did against Porter. He called it smart fighting.

You can call it smart fighting, but it doesn’t make the big names want to fight you if they think they’re going to need to pry your hands off just to try and get room to throw a punch. If Cotto doesn’t want to fight Brook, I’d be willing to guess the main reason is because he doesn’t want to have to chase Brook around the ring and deal with the holding that he might do.

To Brook’s credit, he didn’t hold Golovkin a lot in their fight on September 10 last year. Brook chose not to hold, which was a good thing for the boxing fans. What Brook did do was an awful lot of running around the ring, which forced Golovkin to chase him in every round. The 5th round was when Brook stopped running after he got hit with a body shot. I guess if Golovkin didn’t hurt Brook with that hard body shot, Brook probably would have kept moving until the bitter end.